Another View: Here’s how the new president should approach the first 100 days

By Carter Eskew The Washington Post

Published 1:38 pm, Thursday, November 3, 2016

One of the only silver linings in this miserable storm of an election may be that whomever wins, we can dispense with the tired conceit of the “first hundred days.” This notion, which has been around since FDR, holds that presidents have maximum political power in their first couple months in office and they must use it quickly and forcefully to enact their agenda. This theory of governing made sense when the country was in the Great Depression and was also understandable in Barack Obama’s first days in office when the nation also faced dire economic times. As Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said then, quoting Churchill, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” In 2017, the new president will face a crisis all right, but it will be one uniquely ill-suited for the forceful imposition of political will. The crisis facing America today is not economic; the economy remains recovered, albeit weakly and unevenly. Rather, it is a political crisis. As this election has so depressingly underscored, our nation remains bitterly divided, and the two sides not only distrust each other, many of their loyalists hate each other. Politicians in Washington may offer an extreme and distorted reflection of their constituents’ divisions, but they hold a mirror nonetheless. Neither party in the new Congress will be inclined initially to offer a new president much cooperation, let alone enact a sweeping agenda. Any new president in these partisan times, but especially ones as battered and reviled as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, will have a deficit of political capital from day one. Should either interpret their victory as a mandate to enact an ambitious agenda in their first days in office, they will fail, further undermining their already weakened standing.

So instead of writing checks that will bounce for insufficient political funds, the new president in 2017 should try to use their first months to put political capital in the bank. Admittedly, that advice isn’t an agenda but rather a governing philosophy and requires a fundamental change in how both candidates are thinking about their time in office. Both already have ambitious 100-day plans and seem intent on trying to impose their will and agenda.

Here’s an alternative for the new president to this conventional and outmoded approach to the first 100 days. Send a signal on election night that you understand the country’s quarrel and that you know that almost as many people are condemning your victory as celebrating it. Announce that night that you will dedicate your first years in office to finding common ground. Use the transition to build a cabinet that has multiple members of the opposite party. Tell your staff to scrap the grand plans and instead ask them to draw up a strategy to win a series of small victories in year one of your presidency. As much as possible, avoid obviously controversial appointments so you are not immediately dragged down by endless confirmation fights. This will not be easy, especially on the Supreme Court, but there are “compromise” picks there too, such as Padmanabhan Srikanth Srinivasan and Patricia Ann Millett. Cancel the inaugural balls and parades and make a modest speech about trying to bring the country together while being realistic and respectful about its deep disagreements. Start small, so maybe you get to go big. Think not about a “hundred days” but a thousand.

Eskew is a founder of The Glover Park Group who oversees the firm’s branding, corporate reputation and creative services groups. Before forming GPG in 2001, Carter worked as a political media consultant and corporate strategist.